


A Quiet Place

by JinxQuickfoot



Series: Whumptoberverse [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Awesome Natasha Romanov, BAMF Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Day 5, Gen, Hurt Clint Barton, Hurt Sam Wilson, Hurt Steve Rogers, Missions Gone Wrong, Protective Natasha Romanov, Rescue Missions, TW: bugs, Whump, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:02:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26621827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JinxQuickfoot/pseuds/JinxQuickfoot
Summary: The mission went south for the reasons it always did; bad intel and worse luck. Natasha saw them go down from the skies; a blue blast that exploded over the forest and slammed into where Sam was carrying Clint to his nest. Sam’s wings froze, the two men plummeted, and Natasha was moving.----------------------------------------------------------------------------After Mac Gargan escapes from the Compound, the Avengers track him into a forest where making any kind of sound is deadly.
Relationships: Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov, Natasha Romanov & Sam Wilson, Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov
Series: Whumptoberverse [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1921831
Comments: 33
Kudos: 97
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Whumptober 2020 Day 5
> 
> Prompts: On the Run/Failed Escape/Rescue
> 
> Relationship: Natasha & Sam
> 
> TW: Bugs, insects, cockroaches
> 
> Based on A Quiet Place (2018), although I took some liberties with the monsters after the mother of all cockroaches crawled over my keyboard while I was writing this. 
> 
> Can be read as a standalone, but exists in the same timeline as the other fics in the Whumptoberverse.

The fight was over before Natasha had landed the plane.

There were downsides to having such a varied skill set. Natasha had understood Steve's reasons for telling her to stay behind to provide them with a swift escape plan instead of joining them on the battlefield. Sam was needed in the air, Steve was needed on the ground, Clint was needed in the trees. Natasha was needed here, ready for extraction.

She understood it. It didn’t mean she had to like it.

They’d been chasing Mac Gargan for nearly a month now with Natasha leading the charge. She’d let him get away. No one had said it, but Natasha knew. She had been done with him at that point; while he hadn’t been responsible for Peter’s kidnapping, he’d admitted other things under her interrogation, including staking out the Compound for an attempted robbery on their armory. He hadn’t gotten to any weapons at least, but he had slipped away right under her nose. Natasha wasn’t letting that slide.

Two days ago, they’d finally gotten a lead was more than dead ends and shadows. The reports showed that Gargan was operating out of a forest in upstate New York, only a few hours away from the Compound by quinjet. The report was short and full of holes, and they hadn’t been able to get in contact with the New S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who had sent it. They were going in with the assumption that if said agent was alive, they should be extracted. Natasha didn’t hold out much hope for that; she had flown enough of these missions to know that they were already dead.

The mission went south for the reasons it always did; bad intel and worse luck.

Natasha saw them go down from the skies; a blue blast that exploded over the forest and slammed into where Sam was carrying Clint to his nest in one of the tallest trees. Sam’s wings froze, the two men plummeted, and Natasha was moving.

She was aware that this could well be a trap to lure her away from the plane, but she let F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s defense settings take care of that as she hit the ground running, sprinting through the trees. On any other day it would have been beautiful; the sun-dappled forest floor, the scents of oak and earth. But all Natasha was focussed on was Sam and Clint’s panicked shouts over the comms as they had started to fall.

There was movement to her left and only decades of training stopped her from shooting Steve in the face. The cowl couldn’t hide her mirrored fear on his face, but neither of them had the luxury of comfort right now. They didn’t stop to talk. It only took a nod from Natasha for Steve to gather her up like he had a dozen times before. They sprinted like that to where their comrades had fallen, the serum carrying them at top speed across the forest floor, faster than Natasha could have run on her own.

They had been moving for five minutes before the first shot almost hit them. It didn’t make a noise, the explosion of the tree behind them the only indicator that they were being fired upon. Natasha curled herself into a ball around as Steve dropped to one knee to avoid the hit, rolling forward so as not to lose any momentum. A second later he was on his feet again, the tree behind their heads blown to pieces. 

Alien weapons then. Chitauri.

There was no time to wonder where Gargan had gotten them from. More shots, more misses, and then Gargan’s crew changed tactics.

When Clint was thrown out in front of them, Natasha was sure he was dead. Blood soaked the archer’s torso, and Natasha registered with a lurch in her stomach that not all of it was from the fall. A nasty wound had could be seen in his gut, made worse by the fact that he was still conscious, blood dribbling from one lip as he gasped in pain.

If the plan was to make them stop long enough to become easy targets, it only half-worked. They may not have stolen alien tech on their side, but they did have Tony Stark. Natasha slammed a button on her Widow’s Bites, creating a small force field around them as they crouched over Clint, Natasha’s hands already making work of the wound. Tony had created a nanotech sealant for wounds just like this, but it was a temporary solution, only meant to stop the casualty bleeding out before proper medical treatment could be administered.

Natasha would deal with this image later; her oldest and closest friend’s blood spilling over her hands, Clint’s eyelids fluttering closed, possibly for good. Right now she had other priorities.

Natasha opened her mouth to ask how many, but Clint grabbed her hand, shaking his head at her. He raised one trembling finger to his lips, then passed out. 

It was a testament to Natasha and Clint’s long-standing partnership that she took him at his word without need for explanation, pressing her lips tight together, looking around for the enemy. She didn’t see one, and the shots had stopped. In fact, the forest was eerily quiet. Apart from the occasional whistle of wind, there was no sound at all.

The sealant made Clint’s wound stable but it was a ticking clock. As gently as she could, Natasha pushed him at Steve, jerking her head back in the direction of the quinjet. Steve hesitated, looking torn, before signing Sam’s name. Natasha’s response was to grab his hands and guide them around Clint, insistent, then pointing to the quinjet. Then she pointed at herself before gesturing in the direction of where Sam had fallen.

Steve grimaced but accepted it as Natasha peeled off her Widow Bite and wrapped it around Clint’s wrist instead, activating the shield. She didn’t waste time on goodbyes, and neither did Steve. He set off running with one of their fallen comrades; Natasha went searching for the other.

The shooters chose to go after the two targets instead of the one. Natasha could hear the otherwise silent shots bouncing off the Widow Bite shield as she dashed and darted and ducked through the trees. When she felt far enough way she scrambled up a tree, tucking herself away in the thick foliage. Then she waited.

Her job had always required a lot of waiting; for an opening, for an extraction, for a target. There were times where it was harder than the job itself. She had long ago mastered the art of clearing her head and focussing on nothing else, sometimes for days. It was a part of her she detested sometimes, knowing she could be empty of all but the mission. The Red Room had molded her that way.

It was also the part of her that was the reason she was still alive, and one day she may get around to detangling her feelings about that; that the skills that put red in her ledger were the same ones that would wipe it out.

Waiting had gotten harder since joining the team. Because now there were missions like these, where waiting was the smart move, the only move, and she had to do it knowing it might both save and cost the life of a teammate. 

She compromised, knowing she should give it two hours and giving it one. She didn’t let herself think about Clint or Steve as she dropped from her hiding spot in the tree. They had gotten away. Clint was in medical. Steve was getting reinforcements. Either that, or they were dead, and worrying about them wouldn’t change that. And while Natasha could hide out and wait for backup to come, Sam couldn’t.

No shots rang out as she hit the forest floor. She didn’t waste time, quickly doing a weapon inventory. Two guns with a spare magazine apiece. The knife pressed against her ankle. One remaining Widow Bite, although this one had no shield. She should talk to Tony about that when she got back. If she got back.

There was no point deliberating whether Sam had been captured or had been left to die from the fall. She didn’t have the information to find which was the truth, and she wasn’t going to waste energy worrying about which one it was. All she knew was the direction Sam had fallen in, so she started there.

The mission-trained part of her mind knew that she may well be on her way to find a body. That same part of her told her that thinking about it wouldn’t change the outcome.

The sun was still high in the sky, and despite her increased visibility, she was thankful she at least didn’t have to search in the dark. The forest was thick, no beaten trails between the trees, and between that and trying to not give her position away, it was slow going. Her suit was made for stealth and flexibility and being shot at, not hiking, and soon she felt the brisk air seeping in despite the sweat growing on her brow. All that made her think about though was that Sam was alone and hurt and _cold,_ and she forced herself to move faster.

Every time she brushed the leaves, the sound made her flinch. The forest was just so _quiet_. It was unsettling in a way Natasha couldn’t name. She recalled an old story of a massacre site in France that had been so soaked in blood that the birds no longer sang there, even decades later. 

A rustle in the underbrush would have made anyone else jump. Instead, Natasha froze, back against a tree, hand on her gun. The rustling continued, growing closer and closer until -

A raccoon. It was a raccoon.

Natasha almost laughed, the tension reducing in her shoulders. The little guy was scrounging around for food, digging up dirt. It was the first non-human sign of life she’d seen in the whole forest.

Natasha was just about to press forward to continue her search, when a long, scaly, spiked leg shot out of the underbrush and landed on top of the raccoon, splitting it almost in two.

She became a statue. Her breath stopped as the leg felt around, as though looking for more prey, before slowly retreating into the bush.

She didn’t move for another twenty minutes.

Natasha was afraid of very little. She had been through gunfights and torture, lived and danced in a world of death since she was six years old. She had strode into battle alongside gods and super-soldiers and witches, no powers, no suit of armor, just herself. But Natasha had a secret.

Natasha Romanoff was terrified of bugs.

She had kept the phobia under wraps for years, all the way through S.H.I.E.L.D. and into the Avengers. Only Clint knew, and would occasionally leave the odd rubber cockroach around for her to find, despite the consequences she would rain down on him later.

She hadn’t always been. The Red Room did not leave room for such useless emotions as fear. Then there had a been a mission, shortly after she graduated, where she had been made. They hadn’t killed her. They had just broken both ankles and tossed her into the cellar of the abandoned house they were using as a base.

The cellar had been crawling with cockroaches.

She had lain there for three days, hurt and thirsty with them crawling over her skin. By the time her handler had come to pull her out, they were everywhere; in her hair, under her clothes, trying to find a home in her warm, moist mouth, tiny legs pulling at her lips.

There had been none of the comfort S.H.I.E.L.D. would have offered, sparse and clinical as it would have been. Natasha would have killed to have known Phil Coulson then. Instead, she had a man she no longer remembered the name of, who barely let her brush herself before shoving her in the back of a car and driving for hours to a safe house.

He had made her debrief him, then his superior, then _his_ superior in full before he let her shower.

So no. Natasha Romanoff didn’t like bugs.

She didn’t let herself think about Steve, who had sprinted off into the woods with Clint unknowing the danger. She didn’t let herself wonder how many were in the forest, or how big they were, or what they would do to her if they caught her.

She had a mission. She was going to complete it. So she moved forward.

Sam’s crash site wasn’t hard to miss. Broken branches that had broken Sam and Clint’s fall littered the ground around smashed foliage. They had been lucky, in some ways. The blood covering the greenery showed they hadn’t been so lucky in others.

And Sam wasn’t there.

Natasha scanned the area as best she could without disturbing a single rock or branch, hands curling around the shattered tip of one of Sam’s wings. The dirt was disturbed to one side of the crash site, a myriad of footsteps that eventually turned into two sets, both bigger than either Sam or Clint’s. So two of them. They had caught them here, used Clint as a tool to get Natasha and Steve to stay still long enough to get shot at and carried Sam off…where?

There was only one way to find out. Natasha followed the footsteps, noting the odd roundness of each one. As though the shoes had been covered in some kind of thick fabric to muffle the sounds of walking.

After some time, the trail of footsteps was rejoined by the second, apparently having given up after ditching Clint. The second pair wasn’t as deep, as though the person who ha left them was no longer carrying someone.

She had been going for about an hour before the ground opened up beneath her and she was falling.

She twisted and turned the best she could to minimize the impact on instinct, knowing there was nothing she would be able to do if spikes or traps were waiting for her below. Instead, she fell onto a bed of shifting metal and waited for pain that didn’t come.

After a moment of acknowledging she wasn’t dead, she sat upright, the metal floor beneath her sliding with a cacophony of…

Bells. They were bells.

Natasha lay perfectly still, calculating. Ok, better bells than poisoned spikes (that had been an interesting trip to Siem Reap), even if she was going to be covered head to toe in bruises tomorrow. She guessed the purpose was to announce to Gargan’s crew that they had caught someone else, and Natasha refused to get dragged out of here as a prisoner. So she started moving, trying to make as little noise as possible - if she had announced her presence, she wanted to fake unconscious if they got here before she could get herself out.

She had moved a few inches before her hand collided with something soft. It was another three seconds before she realized it was a human hand, and another two seconds for her eyes to tell her brain that said hand wasn’t connected to a body.

Natasha carefully moved her own hand away, wiping it on the back of her trousers with a grimace. She scanned the bell pit a second time and…there. Towards the back, almost completely buried by bells.

It was barely recognizable, but the scraps of uniform leftover were enough to tell her that this was the New S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who had gone missing before they could finish their report.

They were torn to shreds.

Natasha swallowed, redoubling her efforts to get out of the pit. As slowly as she could, she reached for the knife tucked into her boot.

The sides of the pit she had fallen into were high and smooth, with no handholds to pull herself out. At least she’d fallen close to one of the sides and not into the center. She slammed the knife into the pit wall in front of her, carving a handhold as high as she could reach.

That was the easy part.

She exhaled once, short and sharp, not letting herself overthink it. Then she hauled herself off the bells and laid her upper half flat against the wall. The bells screamed at her, but she was moving.

It was painfully slow. She had to carve herself hand and footholds, haul herself up, and then carve more.

She got about two thirds up the wall when she heard the snuffling from above her head.

The sound was thick and damp and phlegmy. Natasha stilled as it approached, even before the long, black, spiked antenna poked over the top of the pit.

Natasha had never been so grateful in her life for the ability to remain so still she was practically invisible. She forced herself to keep her eyes open as the antenna felt for her, her skin crawling as the antenna was joined by two spindle-thin legs, skeletal but hairy like a fly’s. It stuck to the side of the pit, as though it was about to climb right into her face.

She pressed herself up against the pit wall as the claw-like legs pushed themselves further over the edge, searching, followed by the creature’s huge, bulbous head.

Natasha couldn’t help it. She flinched.

It wasn’t enough to shake her off her precarious position on the wall, but it was more than enough to announce to the creature that she was down here. Or at least, she thought it was. The monster didn’t seem to notice her all, was still snuffling around with that awful noise.

_It’s an enemy,_ Natasha reminded herself. _It’s just like any other enemy you’ve faced. Look for openings; for weaknesses._

Natasha had a truck-load and then some of willpower. It nearly wasn’t enough to make herself look up.

She could see about a third of the creature now, heart pounding as she took in that it was about the size of a small horse. Two more legs joined the front pair as it climbed further into the pit, growing closer to her by the second. The head was a knobbly, slimy thing, all made up of drooling cracks that hinted at teeth underneath. But no eyes. No nose.

Natasha looked down again, grateful to have a reason to do so, taking in the sea of bells below her feet, strategically placed there, surrounding the remains of the New S.H.I.E.L.D. agent.

The thing couldn’t see her. It couldn’t smell her. It could only hear her.

And it didn’t appear to be leaving any time soon. It was letting itself down into the pit.

Slowly, Natasha reached for the fractured piece of Sam’s wing tucked into her pocket, willing her hand not to shake. Then, before she could think too much about what she had to do, she tossed it behind her, to the far side of the pit, as far away from herself as possible.

It took every part of her training to keep from screaming as the creature lunged. She flattened herself against the wall, as one leg brushed the top of her head as it leaped, wild and furious, to where the wing tip had collided with the bells. She could hear it behind her, thrashing and sending bells flying, and didn’t dare turn around as she continued her climb up the pit wall.

The creature seemed to be too preoccupied with chasing its supposed prey through the bells to pay attention to her, and Natasha was so intent in getting _out out out,_ that she hauled herself over the top of the pit straight into the face of a second one.

She froze, slamming her lips shut and shutting off her breath. The creature was shivering, hackles raised, the cacophony from the bit clearly putting it in great distress. It poised as though to jump, and Natasha was just thinking it was going to leap right over her when instead it opened up every slit in its head and _roared._

Natasha had stared into the face of death many times, and nothing even came close to having the rows of razor-sharp teeth, fixed haphazardly into raw, convulsing muscle that stank of copper and sulfur, coupled with the ungodly sound that erupted from the monster in front of her as it pounced.

Natasha hit the dirt, waiting for teeth to sink into flesh. It didn’t come. Instead, there were suddenly claws poking at her back, not able to break through her uniform, and with a moment of horror she realized the creature was crawling right over her back.

A tug on her head told her that it had gotten tangled in her hair.

It was a step too far. She felt tears prick her eyes as she flattened her face against the dirt, feeling the claw scrape against her scalp as the monster fought to free itself. It grew steadily more distressed when it couldn’t, shrieking again as it dug its other legs into her back for purchase, getting even more trapped as it struggled.

It became clear it wasn’t getting free. And the knife was still in Natasha’s hand.

She didn’t let herself think about it. She put the knife to the back of her head and slashed.

She cut close enough to her skull to draw blood, but all she could feel was the leg spring away from her and the creature scuttle off her back.

The second it was gone, joining its fellow in the bell pit, Natasha was on her feet and sprinting.

She didn’t stop until the sound of bells was far behind her, dropping down next to a tree and hugging her arms around herself before she heaved to the side and emptied everything in her stomach.

She wanted to cry. She wanted to strip off everything she was wearing, as though that would get the feel of that _thing_ creeping over her skin. She could smell it on herself, that reek of copper and sulfur mixing the scents of vomit.

But crying was off the table, and armor was armor whether it reeked of megabugs or not.

Megabug. She liked it. It sounded silly, made-up, something Clint might say.

Clint.

Wait, no. She couldn’t think about Clint. She had to focus on the one teammate she could help. If Sam was alive, she had to find him. That hadn’t changed.

Easier said than done. She had sprinted from the pit with no intention other than to leave the megabugs behind, and had therefore long since lost Sam’s trail. Whoever had him had taken precautions against being followed, taking the path that had led Natasha straight into their trap.

She took a breath as she weighed that one, very small silver lining. The bells would have been deafening in a forest where making noise was deadly. Anyone else in the forest would have had to have heard it. And therefore assumed that Natasha had fallen into the pit, and was most likely dead.

She had the element of surprise on her side. Natasha could do a lot with the element of surprise.

It took all her willpower to turn around and walk back the way she had fled, retracing her steps, forcing herself to go slow. Whoever had taken Sam had also been willing to carrying him a fair way, so she guessed he was alive and they were intending to keep him that way. That meant she had time, unless they were planning on transporting him out of the forest. In that case, getting herself torn apart by a megabug wasn’t going to help him any.

She paused when she heard the clattering of bells. It was fainter now, almost muffled, and she realized that she was almost back at the pit. Most of the bell noises themselves were gone, replaced by the scuffling of broken metal being shifted around.

She didn’t want to look. She didn’t want to get close. But she needed to know that the two she had seen were both in the pit, and not waiting for her to make a mistake and make a sound beyond the trees.

She pulled off her shoes before she approached, tip-toeing to the edge of the pit in socks. The sharp drop made it hard to see in from a distance, and she had to come almost right up to the edge to see what was inside. She bent over, caught a glimpse, then sprang away and forced herself not to throw up a second time.

The two she had left were still in there. They weren’t alone.

There weren’t four, or six, or even ten. There was well over a dozen, all climbing over each other, jostling what was left of the destroyed bells as their scaly bodies rubbed up against each other, legs getting tangled as the multiple slits, too jagged and rough to be considered mouths; just ragged flashes of fangs and gore.

Natasha swallowed the bile in her throat and, more stealthily than she had ever moved in life, tiptoed away from the pit, picking back up on the trail of the people who had her friend somewhere in deep in the woods.


	2. Chapter 2

The sun had slid over the sky by the time Natasha caught up to Gargan’s crew, grateful that they had begun this mission in the morning. She didn’t want to be in a wood filled with those things overnight. She supposed she could always climb a tree, lash herself to it so she didn’t fall out, but then she recalled the sensation of spiny legs on her back and resolved to get out of the woods before that became a possibility.

The dealers’ camp made it even clearer that the megabugs would kill anything that made a noise. They’d set up in a clearing, huge tents scattered around open crates. Tip-toeing to the edge of the tree line, Natasha saw piles of Chitauri-style weapons in each one.

There were seven or so people in the camp that she could see, all wearing a soft-looking black attire and thickly padded shoes. They communicated via sign language Natasha didn’t recognize, large, cloth masks over the bottom halves of their faces. They had clearly been here a while and knew how to stay quiet while they worked.

Natasha was just considering what her next move should be when she saw movement from the nearest crate and, even with the lower half of his face covered, Natasha recognized Mac Gargan. Worse, he was talking to a man who was holding the remains of Sam’s wings in his hands. 

Natasha’s eyes darted around the camp again, looking for Sam and not seeing him. In one of the tents then? Her suspicions were confirmed when the man holding the wings pointed to the tent in the center of the camp, and Gargan nodded and headed for it.

Natasha needed to get in there, get Sam, and get out. Natasha was at the top of her field, and with that expertise came knowing when she wasn’t able to handle a situation. Could she take out several armed and dangerous weapons dealers by herself? Probably. Could she do it without making a single sound and bringing down a slew of pony-sized insects on them? Probably not.

Sometimes the best way forward on a mission was retreating.

Fighting wasn’t an option then. She could see what her best option was, for her and the mission. They thought she was dead. Either Steve and Clint had gotten out and were coming back with reinforcements, or they were dead and the plane she arrived on was still there. Either way, if she could just get to the edge of the woods, she had an out. They didn’t know that she knew that they were operating out of here. It was smart, she had to give them that, risky as it was. Even if someone figured out where they were, they would come in like the Avengers had, unaware of the danger, making noise until the megabugs took them out like scaly guard dogs.

She should retreat. Even if that meant leaving Sam behind. Going after him meant giving away that she knew where Gargan was hiding, which meant that he would up and move, and they’d lose the weapons. He’d sell them to god knows who, endangering who knows how many lives.

One thing was the same between the Red Room and the Avengers. The mission mattered more.

Natasha had made up her mind and was about to back away when Gargan emerged from the tent again. He was using a towel to scrub blood off his hands. A lot of blood.

Any thought of leaving fled Natasha’s mind. She’d have to wait for nightfall after all. 

***

The moment night fell and the camp was quiet, Natasha was moving.

They left two of the crew on guard, sitting resolutely on either side of the clearing, Chitauri guns at the ready. Natasha guessed the weapons would be strong enough to shoot a megabug if needed, and wondered if she could snag one on her way out. She guessed that depended on how to hurt Sam was, and how much help she’d have to give him to get out of here.

The camp was well-lit, even by night. Electric lanterns burned silently, illuminating well beyond the clearing into the woods, confirming Natasha’s theory that the megabugs couldn’t see very well, if at all.

She debated between taking out the two guards and trying to stealth around them. While she could take one down easily, she wasn’t sure if she could do it without the other noticing. Not that either guard could sound the alarm if they did see her. On the other hand, she could get past them into the tent without them seeing her, but she wasn’t so sure if she could get Sam out of the tent the same way. A distraction was on the cards, but distraction meant noise, and noise meant - 

Natasha just wanted this day to be over.

In the end, she opted to take out both guards first to make leaving with Sam easier. She waited another agonizing hour for the shift change, to give her the biggest head start she could manage, and then went for the one furthest from Sam’s tent. 

The guard went down with a crackle of Natasha’s Widow Bite, the assassin catching her before she hit the forest ground, before propping her back up in her sentry position. With the mask over the bottom half of her face, it was hard to tell that she was unconscious.

The second guard saw her.

Natasha saw his eyes go wide as he raised the weapon at her, but she was quicker, pulling out one of her guns. But she didn’t aim it at him. She aimed it straight in the air. A gunshot would bring every one of the megabugs around down on them. 

It was a bluff. But Natasha was very, very good at bluffing.

The standoff lasted for all of five seconds before the guard surrendered, laying down his weapon and getting on his knees, then Natasha made sure he was unconscious too. After quickly checking that no one else was awake, she quickened to Sam’s tent and pulled back the flap to enter.

Unlike the rest of the camp, the tent was dark. Natasha lit up the torch on her Widow Bite, the bright light illuminating the small space. At first, the tent looked empty except for some bundled up sheets and empty boxes, and her heart skipped. She had been watching the tent all day, had seen Gargan come in here after seeing Sam’s wings, seen him come out with his hands red.Sam had to be in here. She couldn’t have gotten that wrong.

Her eyes went back to the bundle of sheets. It would be risky keeping prisoners in a camp like this, where they’d be a constant noise risk, unless you secured them so that they couldn’t be.

Natasha made her way over to the bundle, gently laying a hand there and feeling warmth, a stifled moan coming from within the material. As carefully and quietly as she could, she pulled the outer sheets away, revealing a human-shaped cocoon she had to assume was Sam Wilson.

It was the right shape and size for Sam, although that’s all she had to go on, considering the only part of him she could see was his nose. They’d wrapped the rest of him up in thick, spongy material that prevented him from moving or speaking. 

Natasha glanced over her shoulder at the entrance to the tent, then laid a hand on Sam’s shoulder, squeezing it through his bindings. His response was a muffled questioning sound as she examined his head, looking for the edge of the material. She found it, unpinned the end, and unwound Sam’s eyes.

Once he had adjusted to the torchlight from her Widow’s Bite, the confused look turned to one of relief as he saw who was in the tent with him. Not sure how much of the situation Sam had picked up since crash landing here, Natasha placed a hand over her mouth, raising an eyebrow to ask if Sam understood. He nodded, and she quickly started to unwind the rest of him.

She got to his stomach before she saw the source of the blood that had been on Gargan’s hands. The bindings had also been working as a makeshift bandage over shallow but numerous cuts that were carved up Sam’s ribcage. She paused when she got to them, assessing the damage, but Sam waved her off, indicating for her to keep untying him instead.

Natasha did, trusting him that it wasn’t life-threatening. Sam was one of her few teammates she could trust to correctly assess his injuries. Not that the others _couldn’t_ assess their injuries; they were just stubborn enough to soldier on when they should be sitting on the sidelines. Or lying in a hospital bed.

Natasha stopped at Sam’s legs, letting him untangle the rest of himself while she used her knife to cut strips of his bindings away, wrapping them back around his torso to cover up the cuts, pushing down a wave of cold anger as she did so. She recognized that kind of damage. She’d had it inflicted on her multiple times. It was the kind that was designed to hurt but not maim, but the cuts were too shallow to be marks of an interrogation. They were the kind that had been inflicted for entertainment.

Sam exhaled with relief as he pulled his feet free, and Natasha turned to examine the rest of him. A few scrapes, a few bruises, but nothing serious, unless there were injuries she couldn’t see. He saw her questioning, started to answer only to have Natasha press her hand over his mouth, shaking her head. He frowned but gave her the ok signal, then gestured to her hair.

God, her _hair._

But now wasn't the time for that. She signed back. _New look. Don’t like it?_

He managed a half-smile. Then he mimed his wings.

Natasha hesitated. She and Sam needed to get out of here, now, but she didn’t want to leave any of Tony’s technology in Gargan’s hands any more than Sam did. It didn’t help that the wings were brand new, some form of nanotech Tony had whipped up as a kind of apology after Sam’s kidnapping. The wings weren’t in the tent with Sam, so either they were in one of the crates outside, or another of the tents.

She made up her mind. If they were easily accessible, they’d grab them. If they weren’t, they’d have to face those consequences another day.

Turns out, she didn’t have a chance to search at all.

There were very few people in the world that could sneak up on Natasha Romanoff. Apparently, a group of arms dealers who had spent months learning how to move in silence were in that few.

Sam saw them first, grabbing Natasha and spinning her around to face Mac Gargan as he entered the tent, eating out casually out of a tin can. He was flanked by two of his men, all armed with strange, alien-looking guns.

The knife was still in Natasha’s hands from cutting Sam free and she raised it, ready, but Gargan raised an eyebrow at her, gently placing the tin can on the floor and pulling out his own gun. Natasha raised an eye at him in return, gesturing to her ears, signaling that she didn’t believe he’d shoot a loud weapon.

Gargan’s response was to shift aim and fire right at Natasha’s feet. There was a bright flash but, other than that, the only evidence he had fired at all was the small hole in the tent beside Natasha’s big toe.

He raised the gun back up, and Natasha could tell he was smirking behind the mask that covered the bottom half of his face. Natasha gritted her teeth, and dropped the knife then, at Gargan’s prompting, gave up her guns and Widow’s Bite as well.

With Natasha disarmed, the two men flanking Gargan moved into the tent, one of them restraining Sam by the elbows while the other forced a mask identical to the ones they were wearing over his mouth before lifting his gun to Sam’s head.

Gargan stepped up to Natasha instead, so close that he was almost nose-to-nose with her, pulling down his mask. For a brief, repulsive moment, Natasha thought he was going to kiss her, and only the weapon at her friend’s temple stopped her from breaking his neck then and there.

But instead he leaned in, his voice barely audible as he breathed in her ear. “I told you you’d regret touching me.”

He had. In the interrogation room, when Natasha had been asking about Peter. They were words she’d heard so many times she hadn’t even registered them. She’d just kept questioning him until he talked.

Smirking, Gargan took a step away, pulling a flask out of his pocket and shoved it towards Natasha, miming for her to drink.

Natasha calculated her chances. Three against one - against two, once she got Sam free. They’d have to be quiet, all of them, so the rest of the camp wouldn’t even hear them trying to escape. If she could just get that silenced gun off Gargan - 

Sensing her hesitation, Gargan took a second step back, well out of her range, and switched his gun’s aim from her to Sam.

Sam glared down Gargan, daring him to shoot, then switched his attention back to Natasha as she took the flask. Sam shook his head at her, but Natasha’s mind was made up already. They were drugging her, not shooting her. That meant that they were taking them alive, at least for now. She could escape later; she couldn’t reverse a bullet going through Sam’s head.

She lifted the flask to her lips, and drank.


	3. Chapter 3

Natasha woke in a coffin.

Her head was swimming from whatever drugs Gargan had forced into her system, but she blinked them away as she forced herself to focus. 

It was pitch back with no sound except the beating of her heart. She tugged on her arms and legs, only to find them anchored down by strong straps with a soft material lining, her leather armor stripped away from her. What she was lying on was soft too and when she raised her head, pressing her forehead against the coffin’s lid, she found more insulated material there as well.

So this was how they were going to keep her. Natasha had a brief second to consider what it meant that Gargan’s crew had such ready means of securing captives. The way they’d wrapped up Sam; how they’d imprisoned her now. They knew how to keep someone completely quiet, which implied they were used to transporting more cargo than just weapons.

There would be time to think more about that later. Now, she had to get out of this sound-proofed box.

Not being able to hear a thing from outside either was near to the biggest disadvantage they could have given her. Even if she got out, she would have no idea if anyone was guarding her until she opened the lid. She couldn’t bust open the lid and leap out at them either - too loud. She shuddered, remembering a spiny leg caught in her hair. She wouldn’t just have to get out of here; she’d have to do it quietly.

For a moment, she considered staying. If Gargan was transporting human cargo as well as weapons, he might be taking her straight to his buyer. It wouldn’t be the first time she had played captive to achieve an end goal.

That said, there was also a very real chance that Gargan wasn’t taking her anywhere. Maybe murder in these woods, even with silenced guns, was too loud to be worth the risk. They could well be biding their time until they were in a place where they could make noise again, and would execute her there. Given Gargan’s history, they probably wouldn’t even open the box to do it. Dropping the coffin into the bottom of the ocean or burying it six feet under without caring about the living person inside seemed right up his ally.

Natasha decided. She was getting out.

It wasn’t even going to be that hard - in fact it was going to be super easy, barely an inconvenience, as that guy in the videos Peter showed her was always saying. A few slips and twists, and the restraints were off. 

She gently pressed on the coffin lid. Not locked. Nothing weighing it down either.

That didn’t add up - was Gargan expecting her to be unconscious longer? If so, opening the lid was going to announce to them that she was awake. As gently as she could, she pushed the coffin open a crack and peered out.

She saw darkness. That wasn’t good. The camp had been well-lit well into the night. Why turn the lights off now?

She couldn’t see or hear anyone outside; not that that counted for much. But if there was a guard, then she’d just have to deal with it.

As slowly as she dared, she pushed open the coffin lid and set it to one side, allowing her eyes to adjust to the steady stream of moonlight illuminating the clearing. No one tried to stop her. She didn’t hear a thing.

When she sat up fully, shivering in the tank top and shorts they had left her in, she saw that the camp was gone. She was in the same clearing as where it had been, except now every crate, every tent, and every torch had vanished. Natasha had all of three seconds to bemoan that they’d lost their quarry and failed their mission before seeing that she had much more pressing matters at hand.

She wasn’t alone in the clearing after all.

They were so still it was no wonder she hadn’t seen them immediately. There were across the clearing from her, spaced a few yards apart, and there was a long story about how Steve and Clint had survived only to get caught by Gargan that she didn’t have time for right now.

As carefully as she could, she stepped out of the coffin, shaking off the rest of the stiffness in her limbs from being tied down for so long. They’d spaced them out, Steve in the middle and Sam and Clint to either side, all of them kneeling, completely still, a chain wrapping each of them to a pole in the dirt by their necks.

It screamed trap. They had wanted her to get out. They had wanted her to see this.

They wanted her to be the one to get her friends killed.

The sixty or so feet to where her teammates were tied up might as well have been sixty miles. Every inch of ground in front of her was covered in discarded food cans like the one Gargan had been eating out of, each one opened, moonlight glinting off the jagged edge of roughly opened lids.

And they had taken Natasha’s shoes as well.

She cast about for a way around the cans, but there was none. Steve, Sam, and Clint were in the very center of the clearing, with the sharp metal obstacles surrounding them in every direction. The only place she could tread without stepping on one was behind her, back into the forest. That had been purposely left clear. Gargan was giving her the option of ditching her teammates and saving herself.

_Stupid move,_ she thought. She was coming for him. He should have taken her out before she got the chance. But before she hunted him down, she needed to get herself and the others out of the forest, even if that meant leaving them, for now, to go get help. She could call back to the Compound if she got to the plane, but it would be Tony or Rhodey who showed up as reinforcements, and nothing they did was exactly quiet. She could run, risk that the plane was still where she had landed it, that Gargan hadn’t tampered with it, and that she could get back there in the dark without running into any megabugs on her way. None of that seemed particularly likely and, if she failed, she would be stranding her teammates here.

A closer look at them showed more reasons why retreat wasn’t an option. Clint alone was incentive to hurry. Unlike the other two, he was slumped unconscious against his pole, an extra loop of chain around his waist and chest keeping him upright. Tony’s nanotech seemed to be holding from what Natasha could see, but it had only ever meant to be a temporary solution until proper medical care could be administered. She didn’t know how much longer they had before said medical care would become moot.

She forced herself to forget about Clint for now, and focus on her two conscious and therefore more useful teammates. They were both kneeling up high, backs rigidly straight, heads upright, watching her. The only bonds they had was the chain around their neck, which looked like Steve could easily break out of. Their hands weren’t even bound.

On closer inspection, Natasha could see that they were wearing something else, something that looked like armor from a distance. That made no sense, seeing as they had taken hers. The position wasn’t a comfortable or a sustainable one, and while Steve may be able to hold it, Sam was injured and didn’t have the serum. Natasha didn’t know how long she’d been unconscious, although it must have been a fair while if Gargan’s crew had silently packed up their camp. Her friends had a reason for not moving, and Natasha didn’t know how much longer they could hold out.

Her only path was forward.

As frustratingly slow as it was going to be, she was going to have to move the cans, one by one, until she could cross the clearing, and she was going to have to do it without making noise. That move was going to give Gargan one hell of a headstart, which she supposed was the point.

As she reached for the first can, she caught the slightest movement from her peripheral vision. Looking up, she saw the fractional shake of Steve’s head, so slight that she thought she might have imagined it if not for the warning in his eyes. Natasha stopped. Steve mouthed something, but even with Natasha’s flawless lipreading skills, he was too far away for her to make out what it was.

She gently lay a hand on the can. Nothing. She looked inside the can, wondering if there was something that would rattle if she moved it, hopefully something she could remove. Puzzled, she put her hand back on the can again, and gave it the gentlest of nudges.

The can moved. So did the can to its right. And the one to its left. Every can around it wobbled, just slightly. Natasha changed position so she could see the other side of the can, and made out the razor-thin wires strung through the base, impossible to see if you weren’t looking for them. 

Every can was connected. She moved one of them, she moved all of them, and there was no way to do that without making a lot of noise.

Gargan thought what she had done to him to find out if he had Peter was bad? She was going to make that look like a day at Disneyland when she caught up to him. She glanced between Steve, Sam, and Clint, stealing herself.

She was going to have to walk across.

It took a lot of willpower to remove her socks, the last protective covering on her feet before she made her way across the labyrinth of jagged metal. But she would have to try and step from can to can without falling over, and she needed the grip of bare skin for that. Once the socks were off her feet, she balled them up and stuffed them in her mouth instead, gagging at the taste.

There was no point putting it off, so she took a breath through her nose, and stepped onto the first can.

It sank slightly into the forest floor, but otherwise didn’t move, didn’t move the other cans, and didn’t make a noise. She decided to ignore Sam and Steve’s watchful eyes on her, to put the stakes of the stunt out of her mind. This was just like ballet class. Pointed toes, perfect poise, impeccable balance.

With careful precision, she curled her foot around the can, and lifted her other foot off the forest floor.

No movement. So far so good.

She had already chosen her next landing point, a can turned over on its side, a rounded surface that promised little purchase but at least no spikes. Her foot found it, gripped it, and she maintained balance.

Two steps down. A seemingly infinite number to go.

In the world’s most stressful game of ‘the floor is lava’, Natasha slowly made her way across. When she got to about the three-quarter mark, she allowed herself a moment to catch her breath and check on her teammates. No change in Clint or Steve, although now she was closer, she could see the slight shake in Sam’s legs as he struggled to keep himself upright. She could sense Steve’s gaze on her, willing to make eye contact, but she needed to focus. Only a few more steps, then she was there.

She took her next step and made her first mistake.

It was only her lightning-fast reflexes that saved her. The instinct as her foot mistimed a jump, sending a can spinning on its side, was to tuck into herself to avoid the trap coming up to meet her as she fell. Instead, she resisted, bracing herself on one arm and letting her exposed palm fall right onto the edges of a jagged can lid.

Her grunt of pain was swallowed by the makeshift gag as she made herself breathe, assessing the damage. Her weight had flattened the can lid to the ground, but she could feel the metal edge shifting around in her palm, the blood black under the moonlight. It hurt, but it wasn’t fatal. The noise she had made, however…

She held perfectly still, straining her ears for the scuttling of many legs, for that awful, wet snuffing of opening and closing skin flaps, pulsating with razor-like teeth. It hadn’t been that loud, even though it had felt like a fireworks show in the otherwise silent night air. She didn’t hear anything coming, hoped the sound of her fall hadn’t brought the megabugs right to them. But, if she had, she wanted her friends untied before they showed up.

Which meant she now had to stand back up.

Sacrificing her hand meant she had fallen straight forward and not rattled every single one of the cans, but getting to her feet was another matter. Her back foot was still on the can it had been standing on, the other hovering in the air. She couldn’t see where to put it down without disrupting the trap, and she wasn’t in the right position to push herself back up using only her hands. She needed another point of contact with the ground to shove herself back up.

She knew what she had to do. Didn’t make it suck any less.

Biting down into the socks, Natasha lowered one of her legs onto the metal can lids below it. She felt the pressure points, aluminum biting into knee, ankle and thigh but didn’t slow as it cut through her skin, pushing away thoughts of infection and tetanus and the blood pooling on the ground below her.

A can. She was going to kill Gargan with an open can.

Pushing herself back to her feet wasn’t the most painful experience of her life, but it may have cracked a very competitive top ten. But she was up.

Making her way across the last few yards took twice as long as the rest of the journey across the cans had. She tried to catch Sam’s attention, to signal to him to hold on just a bit longer, but his eyes were squeezed shut as tremors ran up both legs. Every step now across the cans was three times as hard with her bleeding leg, but she was determined not to repeat the process of falling and get up.

But sometimes determination can only get you so far.

She was almost there. It was her second to last step, when she saw one of Sam’s legs buckle.

The pararescue caught himself immediately, eyes flying open as he realized what had almost happened, but the small movement was enough to throw Natasha off balance for a second time.

This time, there was clear ground in sight, and she threw herself towards it as she slipped off her cutting metal stepping stone. Her front foot made it. Her back foot didn’t.

Later, she would be glad it had hit the center of the foot and hadn’t sliced off a toe, but in the moment all she knew was that she was in agony and that didn’t matter, because she wasn’t done, not by a long shot. Pressing all her weight onto her already injured front leg, she wrenched her impaled foot free and stumbled over to Sam.

She wanted to cry when her proximity to him revealed what the ‘armor’ was surrounding him.

Bells. Dozens and dozens of bells, cousins to the ones she had fallen onto in the pit. Now she could see why Sam and Steve hadn’t shifted out of the painful kneeling position. The slightest move from them would jangle every bell on their body and bring the creatures down on all of them.

Natasha wanted to give Sam some reprieve, with him clearly near the end of his rope, but she couldn’t find a place to put her hands on him for support without disrupting the bells. She settled for what she hoped was a comforting look instead as she tore off her tank top and wrapped it tightly around her foot and her shorts around her hand while she tried to think of a solution. She couldn’t do anything about the cuts up her leg, as she didn’t dare tear the material.

By the time she had finished, she had her plan.

She rolled over to Sam, working the socks out of her mouth and cupping his chin, easing his jaw open. He offered a half-hearted grimace but let her stuff them in, teeth fastening into the material. Natasha wished she could have said “Hold on” or “I’ll be back” or any number of things, but she couldn’t, so instead she placed a hand on his cheek and briefly pressed her forehead to his before she darted to Steve instead.

She could have helped Sam down off his knees with the trick she was about to try with Steve, but it would be a temporary relief. Steve was the only one who could break their chains; she needed to free him first. Sam’s eyes shut again, biting down into the gag to give him some relief from his trembling legs. And as much as Natasha wanted to hurry back to free him, she couldn’t risk rushing this next part with Steve.

His eyes grew two sizes larger when he realized what she was planning to do, but he couldn’t do or say anything to stop her. Placing both hands around his neck, she very gently and slowly pressed her body against his. She could feel him trying not to flinch as she jostled the bells, flattening them between their two bodies and preventing them from ringing. That took care of the bells on Steve’s chest. Now she had to take care of the one on his legs and back.

There was a little moan from Sam to their left, muffled by the fabric in his mouth and quickly cut off, as though he hadn’t meant to make the sound. Time to get moving then. Crushing Steve against her, Natasha put all her weight around Steve’s neck, and started to lift her legs off the ground.

This was why she couldn’t have freed Sam first; the extra weight would have made his already exhausted muscles give out, but Steve hung on as she strangled him, wedging her legs over his. When she was sure the bells strung along his lower body wouldn’t ring, she let go, hastily slapping a hand over Steve’s mouth as he instinctively gasped for air. He heaved against her for a second, then, for the finishing touch, she laid her hands flat down Steve’s back.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was all she could offer. Steve seemed to understand because as slowly as he dared with Sam panting from exertion next to them, he raised his hands to his neck, took the chain connected there, and pulled.

It was the loudest sound Natasha had ever heard in her life.

Both she and Steve stiffened, listening, waiting. He seemed to understand the danger, and Natasha wondered if he had encountered any of the megabugs in the woods, had seen them, _smelt_ them, knew what they could do.

Natasha gave him a tight squeeze, reminding him to keep moving. The chain was broken; the sound had been made either way.

It took another grueling fifteen minutes to snap away the bell-covered chains surrounding the rest of Steve without making any of them ring too loudly. Every chink of metal set her teeth on edge, but eventually, Steve was free, already darting to Sam’s side and gathering him in a bear hug.

Sam slumped against Steve with a low groan, letting the super-soldier take his weight. Natasha joined them, wrapping around Sam from the back and, with his bells subdued, the two slowly lowered him down so he was sitting back on his legs. Steve went to snap the chains but Natasha caught his hand, holding up a finger, then using another one to point to Sam, indicating for Steve to give him a minute.

Steve understood, letting Sam’s head rest against his shoulder as the pararescue caught his breath. When his breathing had slowed somewhat, Steve reached up and broke his chain too, then began the slow process of de-belling him. 

When they were all gone, Sam flopped onto his back, pulling Natasha’s socks from his mouth. Natasha paused only to give his shoulder a gentle squeeze before she and Steve moved over to Clint. 

Clint was the easiest to break out, Gargan not seeing fit to have covered someone unconscious in bells. Natasha hoped it was the moonlight making him that pale, but she knew it wasn’t. Steve broke his chains, then wasted no time in gathering Clint into his arms before looking into the woods, raising an eyebrow at Natasha.

They had a decision to make. It would be smarter for them to wait for morning, to travel through the woods where they could see where they were going and know if there were megabugs incoming. Sam was exhausted and while Steve was holding up ok, Natasha could tell he was feeling the hours spent on raised knees more than he was trying to let on. At the same time, Clint needed medical attention - had needed it hours ago, the only thing stabilizing him being what was left of the nanotech spray. Although, carrying CIint through a pitch dark forest filled with monsters wasn’t exactly ideal either.

Natasha shuffled closer so she could run a hand through Clint’s hair, thinking it through, because there was a third option. One of them could go for help. One of them could go through the woods alone.

Sam was out of the question, which left Natasha or Steve. Steve was stronger and faster; Natasha was stealthier. 

She knew Steve would volunteer if she posed the decision to him. He would think nothing of barreling blindly into the waiting monsters if it meant even the slimmest chance of saving a teammate. It would be so easy to let him. Which was exactly why it was her who had to go.

Natasha held up her hands, about to sign her plan to Steve, when an explosion lit the night sky in a shower of red and gold sparks.

It was followed by another. And another. And another.

Fireworks. Gargan had left fireworks on the side of the cleaning and rigged them to blow. Nothing Natasha had just done had mattered. The megabugs were coming anyway.

Natasha and Steve only time to exchange one look of fear before Steve was throwing Clint over his shoulder and Natasha was pulling Sam to his feet, and they were running.


	4. Chapter 4

They ran until the fireworks stopped.

Natasha had one arm around Sam’s waist, one of his around her shoulders. He was trying to keep up but stumbled on every third step, exhausted. She was almost envious of Clint, unconscious and unaware in Steve’s arms. Although she knew if she really had the choice between being unaware or able to defend herself if one of those things got too close, she knew what she’d choose.

They had secluded themselves in a clearing when the fireworks had stopped. It went against all of Natasha’s instincts to not press into one of the thickets of trees. The more in the open they were, the less chance they had of making noise.

Natasha helped Sam lie down, pressing up against him. They were both warm now from adrenaline and the sprint, but the night air was freezing and it wouldn’t be long before their body temperatures dropped, especially as Natasha was now only wearing her underwear. Steve lay Clint down next to Natasha and then put his arms around both of them, sandwiching the unconscious archer between them.

It was one of the most miserable nights of Natasha’s life. The dogpile they had worked themselves into did little to keep out the cold night air, even with Steve running hotter than the rest of them. And that was nothing compared to feeling Clint’s breathing turn steadily more uneven against her; the knowledge that it might stop altogether before morning.

Natasha didn’t sleep. She was pretty sure Steve didn’t either, although it was too dark and too quiet to tell. So she lay there in the cold and the quiet and the dark for hours, with nothing to do but think. At some point Sam’s hand twitched in his sleep, brushing against Natasha’s scalp and her skin crawled. She could still smell them on her, sulfur and copper. Although that last one might be from the blood drying on her legs.

The moment the sky was a lighter shade than black, Natasha was up. Steve stirred at the same moment she did, proving Natasha’s theory that he hadn’t slept either. His eyes went wide when he saw the mass of crusted blood over her legs and foot, quickly stripping off his t-shirt to wrap them up. It was too little too late, but Natasha understood the need. To feel helpful in a helpless situation.

She leaned into him when he was finished, letting him put his arms around her. It was all tactics, no comfort. They needed to move and to do that she needed to be warm.

Sam woke up next, wincing as he rolled into an upright position, one hand over his stomach where Gargan had sliced into him. He did a brief check, grimaced, then moved over to Clint.

Tony’s sealant was holding steady, but it wasn’t meant to be used as a replacement for medical treatment for this long. The fact that Clint hadn’t been conscious in close to twenty-fours now wasn’t boding well either. Sam checked him over anyway, knowing there was little any of them could do, except getting him to the quinjet as soon as possible.

At least they now had the sun on their side. It became their compass as they headed back in the direction of the quinjet, Natasha now dressed in Sam’s t-shirt. Steve was carrying Clint again, and although at least Sam could walk on his own now, it was slow - very slow. They were aware of every stone and branch and patch of leaves. None of them were wearing shoes, which helped with noise control, but made going over the uneven forest floor even harder. Natasha’s cut foot wasn’t helping either, and an infection was almost certainly on the table by this point.

She ignored it. There was nothing she could for it now except keep moving forward.

Gargan must have been long gone by now. There wasn’t anything she could do about that either. And not only had they failed to stop him, but they had also handed over Sam’s wings, Clint’s bow, and Natasha’s Widow Bites as well. Natasha had a feeble hope that they wouldn’t be able to find all the trackers hidden in each piece of Stark-designed equipment, but Gargan was more than they’d given him credit for. She wouldn’t be making that mistake again.

Either luck had favored them, or it had been some internal instinct that must have sent them running the direction of the quinjet last night. After hours of careful walking, hearing Clint’s breaths grow shallower, they saw the edge of the treeline and glimpses of the plane beyond.

Their luck ran out there.

Natasha almost laughed. After the infestation in the bell pit, after the small army of them she had pictured running into the cleaning last night, the line between them and safety was one, single megabug.

It was clinging to the edge of the quinjet, right over the loading door, antenna waving feebly in the light wind. It wasn’t even a big one; an adolescent, judging by the size of the earlier ones she had seen.

Sam stopped dead to her left, stifling a curse, and it occurred to her that Sam probably had had no idea what they had been running from; he’d either been unconscious or tied up in Gargan’s tent before she had found him. He pointed to the megabug, then covered his mouth, raising an eyebrow, asking if that was why they’d been so quiet. Natasha nodded and Sam exhaled sharply, then raised both hands to ask what the plan was.

Steve was already lowering Clint carefully to the ground, preparing to fight, gesturing for the other two to stay back. Natasha would have been more than happy to never get close to anything remotely insect-like again, but she readied herself instead. After a moment, Sam gritted his teeth and joined them. Steve shot them an annoyed look which they both ignored. They were doing this together.

Just as they were about to move towards the quinjet, a massive, flat, bulbous head appeared over the side of the plane and sunk one of its many sets of jaws into the adolescent’s thorax.

It was the biggest one they’d seen yet; an ugly, fat thing that made no qualms about chomping down on its kin, legs clinging to the quinjet so hard that it was leaving scratch marks that should have been impossible on the impenetrable material.

The three of them froze as the huge beast settled over the quinjet door where the smaller one had perched to enjoy the feast.

Steve made to take a step forward but Natasha grasped his arm, holding him back and shaking her head. If they strolled into combat with that thing, none of them were walking away. They needed to wait for it to leave.

Natasha’s eyes found Clint. He was bone-pale, the only sign he was still alive the slight rising and falling of his chest. They couldn’t afford to wait.

She knew what she had to do. It didn’t make it any easier.

She motioned for Steve and Sam to stay where they were as she signed that she was going around to the other side of the plane. Steve grabbed her wrist, eyes questioning, shaking his head at her.

The Avengers never used their powers on each other, the Accords excluded, and Natasha hated doing it now. But she read people, could manipulate people, find all their weak points and exploit them to get her way.

When Steve tried to protest further, she guided his hand down to just above Clint’s wound, putting her other hand on Steve’s shoulder, telling him it was ok. He wasn’t abandoning her. He wasn’t giving up. He was protecting his teammates. 

It worked. Steve relented. Natasha put her forehead to his, withdrawing to see Sam’s gaze on her, torn. She stopped only to run a hand over Clint’s hair, knowing that he was going to hate her a little for doing this. Knowing he’d do the same for her if the positions were switched.

She wanted to stall. She wanted to say a proper goodbye. But that was something she’d always known she was never going to be given the luxury of. She settled for detaching one of Clint’s hearing aids, cracked and damaged from the fall, and sliding it into her back pocket. At least later they could track it to find her body.

Sam caught her wrist as she went to leave. Natasha took his other hand and placed it over Clint’s hastily patched wound instead. Sam was the closest to a medical professional they had right now; he was needed here. He let go of her, still unsure.

_Be right back,_ Natasha signed, wishing she believed it.

The large megabug hadn’t shifted by the time Natasha made it to the other side of the quinjet. It had taken all her willpower to step out of the safety of the trees into the open, reminding herself that the creature couldn’t see her. It could just hear her. It was _about_ to hear her.

She didn’t want to do this. She wanted it to be someone else. She wanted to curl up in the safety of the quinjet with her friends and go home.

She did it anyway.

When she as far away from the quinjet as she could risk, Natasha opened her mouth and screamed.

It was a short sound, loud and abrupt, and even before she finished it she was moving. She was beyond the tree line now with no place to hide, so she started running, back towards the trees. She was going to climb one, hope the megabug couldn’t follow. It was a ghost of a plan, but it was some comfort.

It didn’t work. She could hear it coming, knew it was going to catch her before she even got close to safety. She focussed on anything else instead; the fact that it was now no longer on the quinjet, that even now Steve and Sam would be carrying Clint to safety, and that all three of them were going to get home. She felt Clint’s broken hearing aid in her hand, clutched it to her as the makeshift bandage on her foot caught and sent her tumbling to the ground.

Her last thought was that she hoped her death was quick.

But it didn’t come.

Natasha had shut her eyes, shut off her breath, not wanting to see or smell the thing coming. But she couldn’t shut off her ears. She could still hear. And what she could hear was a high-pitched shriek from the hearing aid she was currently clutching in her hand.

She opened her eyes.

The megabug was a few feet away from her, every tooth-filled slit in its head open and wailing as it bent over itself, obviously in agony. Natasha shoved the hearing aid out towards it, realizing that her tight grasp on it had broken it further. The megabug backed off, just a step.

She stood. Took a step. It took a step - away from her.

Slowly, Natasha started to back towards the quinjet. The megabug didn’t follow.

Almost laughing in disbelief, Natasha quickened her pace just as she heard the quinjet door open, just as the hearing aid crushed in her palm went from malfunctioning to broken beyond repair, the high-pitched tone cutting off.

The quinjets were made to be stealthy, but not silent, and the opening of the door may as well have been one of Gargan’s fireworks.

Natasha ran.

It took a few seconds for the megabug behind her to recover, but once it did, it was barreling after her, claws skittering over the hard ground as it snarled, enraged. Natasha didn’t look back, focussing instead on the quinjet door, throwing herself at it when she was in range.

A pair of strong arms caught her, and then Steve Rogers was hauling her inside and slamming the button to close the door behind her.

He wasn’t quick enough. Natasha felt the brush of a claw on her back, opening skin as she was tugged inside, and then the megabug was trying to crawl in with her, trapped by the half-closed quinjet door.

It was a testament to the creature’s strength and durability that the door didn’t crush it. Instead, the creature was fighting to get it open, and _winning._ It was only a matter of time before it was in the small, enclosed space with them. 

Clint was in back with Sam tending to his wounds, but Natasha skipped over those details as she went straight for the remaining, undamaged hearing aid in Clint’s right ear.

Sam and Steve were already pulling guns, Sam mouthing a curse as he abandoned the medical equipment he was only halfway through setting up, but the bullets bounced harmlessly off the creature’s exoskeleton. Steve tried to take it down with a well-aimed bullet into one of its mouths, but the only response was a phlegmy shriek as the creature fought even harder to get to them and snuff out the source of the noise.

Natasha was focussed on the hearing aid, doing all she can to break it, but they had been designed by Tony to not break, not ever, and it seemed like anything outside of a fall from the sky wasn’t going to cut it. 

Steve shot her a questioning look as he continued to fire, holding out his hand for it, but Natasha didn’t need him to break it completely, just a little bit, enough for that ringing to start up again. She mimed it out and had to hope he understood as she passed it over.

Either Steve did, or he didn’t have enough strength to break it entirely as he left Sam to cover them to crush it in his palms, and then a splitting noise was filling the quinjet. The megabug shrieked, trying now to back out of the door it was trapped in. Sam dropped his gun and leaped for the door instead, slamming his hand on the button to open it. The second the megabug was free, it ripped its head away and sprinted for the woods, and Sam was closing the door to the quinjet.

The relief lasted until the spiked leg pierced the quinjet roof, only a few inches over Natasha’s head.

They heard them then. Dozens of legs, the snapping of jaws. They had found them. And they weren’t just around the quinjet. They were trying to get inside.

Natasha was headed for the pilot’s chair even before Steve was steering her that way, the super-soldier firing at the leg through the ceiling. It rewarded him with a splatter of black blood that stank of rotten eggs to the face, and the leg dropped into the plane with them, still twitching. Steve grimaced, spitting on the floor as a second leg pieced their hull. Then a third.

Natasha was trying to get them in the air, but it became clear fast that if she didn’t get the megabugs off them first, they would take the plane down while they were flying it.

So she put the broken hearing aid to the quintet’s PA system, and let the bastards have it.

***

None of them spoke a word on the way home. It was like the oppressive need for silence had wrapped around their tongues, keeping them dormant. Once they were in the in air and F.R.I.D.A.Y. could take over the autopilot, they set about treating each other’s wounds, focussing on doing what they could for Clint first. Sam then disinfected Natasha’s cuts and she his, feeling the anger return as she cleaned up Gargan’s handiwork. 

This wasn’t over. Not by a long shot. She was coming for him.

They were nearing the Compound when Clint suddenly woke with a start, making them all jump. He glanced around them all, eyes bleary, his nose wrinkling. “What the hell happened? And why do you guys _stink?”_

The strange sound that followed made Natasha flinch until she realized it was laughter. Her laughter. It was loud and discordant and jarring but she couldn’t make herself stop.

Sam joined in next, then Steve, as Clint stared at them all in disbelief, still weak and half out of it. “Seriously? What the hell did I miss? And which of you assholes took my hearing aids?”

Natasha was out of the pilot’s chair before Clint had finished his sentence, crossing the plane and lying down next to him, ignoring the fact that there was hardly room for both of them on the quintet’s makeshift bed. Clint stilled then as she curled into him, except to whisper, “You ok?”

She nodded so he could feel. He let out a breath, wincing, but didn’t push her for more answers as they made their way home.

_“Agent Romanoff?”_ The calm voice of F.R.I.D.A.Y. made everyone expect Clint jump. _“There are conditions ahead that my autopilot cannot navigate.”_

Reluctantly, Natasha uncurled herself from Clint’s side, settling back into the pilot’s chair, only to go rigid when she saw what was waiting for them below.

There was a ship in the Compound’s landing zone. A very alien-looking ship.

She heard Steve’s sharp intake behind her a second before the sounds of weapons being readied, Sam and Steve arming themselves. Natasha focussed on landing the quinjet next to the alien aircraft before strapping on her spare pair of Widow Bites and taking the gun Sam handed her.

Tony was there before she was, appearing out of nowhere in the Bleeding Edge armor, repulser raised. He shot her a look that was equal parts confusion and worry, but they didn’t have time for answers. The door of the alien craft rattled open, revealing the figure standing in the doorway.

They all froze, Natasha recovering first, her voice horse with disuse when she finally spoke, addressing the alien ship’s pilot.

_“Bruce?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Whumptoberverse will continue in [Amendments](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26738935/chapters/65233669)
> 
> You can check out my other BAMF Natasha fic [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23525404)

**Author's Note:**

> So the 'megabugs' are a cross between the monsters from A Quiet Place, the Demogorgons from Stranger Things and the real life horrorshow that is the American cockroach. I am enjoying them a lot. Natasha is not.
> 
> Come scream at me on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/jinxquickfoot), especially if you also write fanfic or do fanart! Share your work with me!
> 
> If you want some entertainment that is free of any kind of insect, "Kill the Cat" is a film and screenwriting podcast which my co-host and I take our favorite films and screenplays and break down why and how they work, and in a week we're releasing our episode on Avengers: Infinity War. If that sounds up your ally, pop over to [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ypaen3yM5Q&t=1s&ab_channel=KilltheCatPodcast), [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/5hCprc9UCBZP4srFrBXKT1?si=0CF3IKjGThK0tohIqcEy4Q) or wherever you get your podcasts and hit that 'subscribe' to get notified when we release the episode.
> 
> And hey. You're going to make someone's day today, and it's perfectly ok if that person is you.


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